Better soil, better snacks.

What is it?

As explained earlier in one of our Ingredients blog posts - the one about minerals - good healthy soil makes sure that a wide spectrum of nutrients ends up in your grains, beans, legumes, vegetables, and fruits.

There are a lot of different crops, all drawing their specific ‘mix’ of nutrients from the soil they are grown in. Therefore, when a farmer decides to repeatedly grow and harvest - for example - sugar beets on the same piece of land, the land loses its fertility resulting in a downward spiral in revenue. Also, the change of pests and plant diseases considerably rises as they too stick to certain crops. And with that, the amounts of pesticides that need to be used increases.

Unfortunately, in conventional farming, crops don’t rotate much as for farmers, diving into another crop costs money as well as effort. Also, how do they know they can sell what they’ve harvested, when this differs from their regular specialism?

To both show people, the importance of crop rotation - the single most powerful (and natural) tool to fight unfertile and unhealthy soil and the loss of biodiversity - a company called Alpha Food Labs came up with the brand idea for Varietal Crops Crackers. Delicious crackers made with evenly delicious and nutritious crops grown within a period of crop rotation.

Why is it cool?

First of all, hooray for this beautiful way of supporting our hard-working farmers. With these Crop Crackers and their amazing packaging hitting the supermarket shelves, consumers will be informed about the concept of crop rotation and its importance. Which would be an awesome development, considering the fact that right now, - due to intensive farming and our current food system - 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil per year is being lost.

Also, we think it’s a great way for us humans too to enjoy different, sometimes quite unknown, crops and get to know their taste. Have you ever had a crunchy cracker made of Dark Northern Spring Wheat, Bravo Flax, Garbanzo Beans or Huntsman Millet?

Better soil, better snacks! We think Varietal’s mission statement just hits the spot. Not only for snacks though, better foil means better food overall.

Does it have future growth potential?

Oh yes, it has to! Every time an initiative like this catches our attention, a big smile appears on our faces. We just love these creative vibes, in which cool new product ideas are developed to fight the current food system. As we all know that isn't a durable one. As far as we know, these amazing crackers haven’t hit the supermarket shelves yet, but are about to be launched very soon. If you want to stay updated on that, or just want to know more about Varietal, you can visit their website.